[D'sP] They'll Be Different - Chapter 319 (Patreon)

Doyle rolls to the side and sighs, ‘Okay. What about rituals?’

Ally smiles, ‘Arrays are basically free-form magic circles. They’re made of runes and lines. Formations, in turn, use formation flags, anchor points, or whatever else you want to call it. Those are laid out and connected with lines of power. The flags can be just about anything.

‘Rituals? Well, you take something, do something with it, and you get something. Some have described rituals as wish magic for the general public. They can be as simple as a child making a flower crown or as complex as an entire kingdom. And I mean that last example literally.

‘Someone managed to design a ritual around an entire kingdom and how it functioned. You could never do that with an array or formation. The requirements on those are too tight.’

Doyle leaned back, ‘Let me guess, there isn’t actually a skill for rituals?’

Ally laughs, ‘Correct! Rituals are based on things such as tradition, rarity, power, and so on. A culture with a tradition around bathing might end up with it becoming a ritual that results in the populace being more beautiful overall. On the other hand, rituals also have a nasty habit of not wanting to do what you want the more specific you are unless you provide more power than the result you want is worth. Oh, and the “worth” is decided not just on actual value but also how much you desire it.’

Doyle, ‘So what does that have to do with me gaining a skill to make arrays?’

Ally, ‘Well, rituals are the true root of the other two and so much more. It is similar to how the most basic “world energy” manipulation skill is the true root for all magic and so on. And no, quintessence manipulation isn’t some root to all things. It is, however, the root of true reality manipulation. Every reality has its own twist to how things react, but if you dig deep enough, certain truths remain while within this area of the multiverse.

‘Some would even say that some truths are truly multiversal in scope. Though that is just the result of minds not ready to comprehend the true span of the multiverse, nevermind the suppositions about there being divides even within the void.’

Doyle clacks a couple stone cubes together. ‘That is cool and all, but skill get how?’

Ally snorts, ‘Fair enough. Anyway, rituals are the root of arrays, formations, and any other similar concept. At some point, maybe so far in the future that your home universe no longer exists, but at some point you will end up in a place where arrays aren’t arrays as you know and there won’t be a friendly system to teach you.

‘So, we need to future proof what skill you get to a certain extent. So far your skills are great and honestly? Even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t matter for the most part.

‘For instance, biosphere balancing. Sure, maybe it won’t teach you how to balance the ecology that might develop right on the event horizon of a black hole, but you don’t need it to. You are your own self contained dimension and so are internally consistent.

‘Arrays though? Those are, shall we say, a bit further reaching. Yes, whatever you learn will always work within your dungeon. Except, part of the point of being a dungeon is sending stuff out. That is why your original dungeon skills are so universal that you can literally copy paste an array.

‘If someday you do end up dealing with creatures that developed on the event horizon of a black hole, you’ll be able to deconstruct what they have and create it anew. We need the same to be possible for your array skill.’

Doyle sighed, ‘Still just a bunch of exposition. I get it, forward thinking and future proofing are important. But, I need the skill now and not in a quadrillion quadrillion years. I’ll be happy to listen to all this later.

‘Right now, though, what do I need to do? Because at this point, I will just as likely forget this by the time I need it as I am to remember. It honestly feels like you’re inserting a bit of your own hopes and dreams about the future into this.’

Ally coughs awkwardly, ‘Well, I do want to see what there is to see. And well, I never placed my hopes too high on gaining True Immortal status myself. Even my mom can’t jump between universes willy nilly, depending more on the same sort of backdoor that deities use.

‘Anyway! We’re looking for a skill with a name like “universal array master” or “primal array master” and to get that we’ll have to lean on rituals. It won’t start out teaching you how to do all the fancy cross universe stuff, but the knowledge will be tailored such that your core won’t be based in this universe’s trappings.’

Doyle nods, ‘Fair enough. What rituals and how? Do I need to use the array I already know or will you have to figure out how to slip me some extra symbols?’

Ally laughs, ‘Ironically, you’ll probably be helping your world a whole lot by doing this because all the symbols you need are local. While your planet’s attempts at magic and alchemy might have touched on how the rest of the universe now works, the actual symbology is different. Magic symbols aren’t going to come across one to one because they are magic and thus the local magical lexicon isn’t the common one.

‘What would normally happen is that various people will have picked up skills for this kind of thing in the tutorial. Then, as their skills level up, they gain knowledge of any of the more common runic systems depending on who they learned it from and personal talent. They might plunder the old knowledge, but the new symbols will take over and when they join the larger universe, they will be behind everyone else using those runes.

‘After all, there are civilizations with millennia of rich history using those runes. What you need to do is draw in a bunch of local symbols and make your own array with them. Through force of will and ritual nonsense, make the universe and system recognize your world’s symbology as a new runic system. Maybe even multiple runic alphabets if you’re lucky.’

Doyle, ‘Why is this good for the planet? Even if we do that, those other runes will still be out there with all that history.’

Ally smiles, ‘Because your world’s runes will be different! There will be certain things they will do better or worse than others. Ways in which it will pair up or not work with other runes.

‘Just look at the difference between your world’s four and five element myths. Water, wind, earth, and fire? Water, wood, fire, earth, metal? Sure, they share a few elements, but the connections are different. The five element one doesn’t even have air! Instead, relegating to a hidden sixth element of void or some such.

‘Now, in the four element setup, metal is a specialization of earth. You want to manipulate metal? Get good at earth first. If that was how the common rune set out in the rest of the universe? The five element system would be a breath of fresh air despite lacking that element! Suddenly there is a system where manipulating metal is a basic ability.

‘Not just that, but wood? At least metal tends to be seen as a specialization of just the earth element. Wood, on the other hand, is going to be some sort of combined element, probably of earth and water. Sure, the five element system will be trash for air magic, but that just means you should use the four element system runes for that.

‘Of course, casting a spell will tend to limit you to a single system and worldview. Arrays? Formations? You just need to understand the symbology and be able to draw the runes. Sure, there are some friction points between runes and not all work together. But that is why a new system is so important! The points where one system doesn’t work with another? A new runic system might provide a rune that can bridge that gap.’

Doyle, ‘So what, do I just figure out all the symbols and runes the planet ever used to represent fire, toss them in a circle, and hope?’

Ally shrugs, ‘You can try that, sure, but the ritual part of it would almost guarantee failure. Instead, find a magic circle or similar where the original intent was to fill in whatever you need and work off of that. Oh, and probably best not to start with a material like fire or earth. Don’t want to flood a floor with the stuff.

‘Rather, try to target something with an effect. You can include element runes into that, but it is a lot safer to use fire if you specifically tell it to just burn a random tree. Common things people attempt this with are plant growth and divination. Both tend to have a long history in any world and the after-effects are more likely benign. You don’t want to try to call for rain only to either get a downpour that lasts days or an effect that keeps rain away.’

Doyle nods, ‘Yeah, any kind of weather manipulation is tempting fate. Even divination seems a little chancy, so I guess plant growth is the way to go. Oh, and why doesn’t every planet just go back and do this for their original runes?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Once enough of the world’s population recognizes the new runes, the old ones lose their chance to gain power. After all, there is a whole lot more power behind the common runes compared to the local ones.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I guess that means I need to go snooping around Ace’s library. Glad he saved so many books.’

Ally nods, ‘It would be a shame if you didn’t at least try to include the runes and symbols from multiple cultures. Just the difference between even close neighbors is kind of impressive and it is a shame how much was lost relatively recently with the standardization of religion your planet experienced.’

After that, the two of them turned their attention to a building that was hidden within the inner circle of the town. Well, “hidden” is a little unfair. Everyone who is allowed in the area knows where it is. Rather, it is simply in the center of a handful of other buildings such that you can’t see it from the road.

What is hidden, is the underground section where Ace keeps the more sensitive books such as those fantasy books that describe how to summon unsavory things. Most of them aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, but Ace and the others aren’t taking a chance that someone might glean something from a fake Necronomicon. In fact, they’ve made sure to quarantine every book based on that mythos that they can get their hands on.

Some might say they’re paranoid. Ally, on the other hand, praised their foresight when she first found out what they were doing. While those stories aren’t true, some of them fit in the same category as certain old deities. Maybe the stories are false, but not all the beings are equally so.

Anyway, the book collection kept growing and had multiple libraries worth of books in it at this point. Gathered from local, grade school, college, university, and private collections. Many people ended up fed over the past months because they were willing to hand over a few books.

What this meant was that Doyle had a massive collection of knowledge to look through and choose from. An insurmountable amount of it if Ace hadn’t already sorted it to an extent. Sure, maybe Doyle would miss some interesting bit of symbology derived from a child’s tale, but he at least managed to gather from most major religions and myths from across his planet’s history.

This only took a month and change because thankfully he wasn’t trying to gather every rune and symbol from each culture, but rather just a few that he thought would work for what he wanted. Doyle still ended up with well over a thousand symbols to pick and choose from and the final array would be quite large as he wanted to include at least a couple from each set.

Thinking About A New Skill - Chapter 318

A Skill - Chapter 320